New Imac or Mac Pro for Vectorworks?

[C Mansell]

Hi guys.

I'm thinking about buying a new mac shortly, mainly to run vectorworks. I'm currently running version 12.5.2 but am thinking about upgrading to 2008 next year.

I currently have a 24" 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo Imac with 2Gb RAM which is generally ok but is very sluggish when looking at some sheet layers, particularly if I have viewports with sketch rendering.

So my question is this - will I see a noticeable performance improvement if I upgrade to the 24" 2.8Ghz extreme Imac with 4Gb RAM or would I be much better off buying a fairly low to mid spec Mac Pro with the same memory?

Alternatively, is the sluggish sheet layer performance just one of those things in the Mac version of vectorworks that will happen to some degree on any machine so I should just stick with my current machine?

Any thoughts / advice would be much appreciated before I hand over the cash to our friends at Apple!

Cheers

CM

[bonus]

I think you should start with VW 2008. - not a new mac.

There is a significant improvement in the rendering engine in 2008. Now you will have real time open GL rendering, meaning the object remains rendered while rotated on your screen. Even with complex objects.

I just tried final polygone rendering. What took 10 sec in 12.5 takes 2 sec in 2008. This is just a quick test, but 5 times faster is not bad. So it has more to do with VW than what mac you have. Im sure there will not be any imrovement with another mac.

So start with 2008.

[Guest]

I agree with Bonus here.

The computer you have is a pretty good computer as it is, and probably has enough power to do what you do with VectorWorks.

Upgrading to VW 2008 will provide you more speed while using VectorWorks (and RenderWorks), and is cheaper than buying a new computer.